Sunday photoblogging: Étang de Montady

by Chris Bertram on September 17, 2017

Back to Sunday Photoblogging. I’ve been on hiatus from CT due to some family matters, and others have taken up the photoblogging job. This is the Étang de Montady as seen from the Oppidum d’Ensérune (both near Béziers in Languedoc). Both have Wikipedia entries, so please consult, but the story is that monks constructed this in the 13th century. They drained the swamp/pond by creating a drain at a central point which flows through an underground culvert and the radial ditches that result force the fields into their triangular pattern.

You can accept the agricultural cover story if you like, but this place was obviously constructed by or for space aliens. The locals clearly understand this, or they would not have left the nearby ghost town undisturbed for two thousand years.

Welcome back to photoblogging, and I hope that you and yours are doing well.
This is a great photo capturing the massiveness of this place. What’s stunning to me is that these medieval monks had the vision to undertake such a project.